This story comes from the Salish people of the Pacific Northwest for whom storytelling is the primary way of transmitting their history, religious beliefs and myths. In the story a young girl comes to the beach in despair and find a beautiful sleeping mermaid. Upon awakening the mermaid shows the young girl her compassion and how they are inextricably connected.

Mermaid has been made as a limited edition of eight copies during the spring of 2016. Sets of three wooden boxes each measuring 6.5 x 6.5 x 3 have been painted and fitted with mirrors and transparent sheets with the text of the myth. Edition of 8. Box measuring 7 x 7 x 10 inches.

Charles Hobson talks about what distinguishes an artist's book, using three of his own creations as examples from an exhibition at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Each of the books, Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes, Fresnel's Tower and Quarantine show how the characteristics of sequence, flow, word & image and structure operate to make a book a medium of creative expression.

Amy Hempel's elegant and spare short story offers an insight about how fragile and often unreliable are the judgments we make about events in our lives. The question at the end of the story opens the gaze to wider possibilities that may come with reflection and time.

"How do we know what happens to us isn’t good?"

The story is a proposal to resist certitude.The design of the book connects words, photocollages and paintings of the night sky into a series that is linked to the essential meaning of the story.

The Man in Bogotá has been made as a limited edition of forty copies in the summer and fall of 2015. Each copy has been signed in the colophon by the author, artist and designer. The book measues 11 x 8.75 x 1 inches. The box measures 9.75 x 12.25 x 1.5 inches.

THE WOLF WHO ATE THE SKY
The Wolf Who Ate the Sky is a story by Anna Isabel Rauh, and her mother, Mary Daniel Hobson that has been designed and illustrated by Charles Hobson.

A very hungry wolf eats the sky, plunging the whole world into darkness, but a brave boy and a menagerie of animals are determined to bring back the light.

The story was created by Anna and her mother in car rides to and from preschool, and then told and re-told growing into the tale that appears in the book. You can see and hear Anna at 3-1/2 years old tell one version of this tale on YouTube.

This three-generation project has been published as a trade edition by Heyday Books, Berkeley, 2015.

The hardback book sells for $16. It has 32 pages and measures 10-1/4 x 7-1/4 inches. It is available at Heyday and at Amazonor at your local bookstore.